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Daily Archives: October 6, 2013

DALLAS — As much as coach Kyle Flood hoped that the Rutgers football team’s secondary had gotten better during the last month, he acknowledged in the days leading up to the latest test against Southern Methodist that “ultimately your improvement is judged on game day.”

The verdict returned Saturday showed that the secondary is still guilty of having a long way to go.

While it held the run-and-shoot in check for three quarters, Rutgers wound up allowing 484 passing yards — the most ever accumulated by one of its opponents — and five passing touchdowns in a 55-52 triple-overtime victory against SMU. And that’s not accounting for a highlight-reel two-point conversion.

“That is a huge concern for us because we’re a very good defense and that’s unacceptable,” said cornerback Nadir Barnwell, who recovered a fumble in the end zone for his first career touchdown. “We know we have to go back to the chalkboard and go back to the film and find out what was wrong.”

Both Kyle Flood and Terry McAulay were in Dallas this weekend but they haven’t had a chance to catch up. When they do, there will be plenty to discuss.

The Rutgers football coach said Sunday that he is looking for clarifications on two points with the American Athletic Conference’s coordinator of officials.

First, Flood wants to know whether Southern Methodist receiver Jeremy Johnson should have had to sit out the two-point conversion attempt on which he made a toe-tapping catch to tie the score at 35-35.

The game was stopped for an injury timeout for Johnson after the previous play, which was a 13-yard touchdown catch by Johnson.

McAulay, who doubles as a NFL official, worked the Cowboys-Broncos game Sunday night.

“I generally catch up with him on Mondays and I’m curious because I thought it was something that could be reviewable just because I thought it was an egregious error,” Flood said, “but we’ll see what the official word is. I don’t know that I’m right.”

Flood also wants an explanation for the whistle he heard reviewing the film of the play where Jeremy Deering accidentally kicked a fumble out of bounds.

With Rutgers leading 35-20 late in the fourth quarter, Lorenzo Waters stripped a receiver and the ball hugged the sideline but stayed in bounds before Deering’s snafu.

Deering was unavailable to the media on Sunday.

“There is a whistle on that play that stops the play,” Flood said. “We have to find out why the whistle might have been blown when it was. Those are things I have to talk to Terry about. The officials in our league do an excellent job and it’s a game played at very high speeds. They have a challenging job on their hands just like we do as coaches.”

PISCATAWAY – Jamal Merrell practiced fully on Sunday evening as Rutgers prepares for arguably its biggest game of the season Thursday evening at consensus No. 8 Louisville.

Having missed the last three games with a kidney ailment, merely practicing was a big deal for the 6-foot-4, fifth-year senior outside linebacker, who will get the start on Thursday evening at Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium. If nothing else, he has a greater appreciation for the game after not being able to play recently.

“It’s been humbling, a humbling experience,” Merrell said after practice at High Point Solutions Stadium on Sunday evening. “Being a captain, I just used that time off the field just to push my teammates to stay focused and making sure everyone knows their role and have a great game and trying to be a team player.”

“Tremendous opponent. Coach (Charlie) Strong is as good as there is in the profession. Probably the best quarterback in the country. One of the more talented teams in the country in general. A great challenge for us to go there on Thursday night and have an opportunity for us to be 1-0.”

JAMAL MERRELL IS OFF THE INJURY REPORT. IS HE GOOD TO GO?

“Jamal has been cleared to play. He will go on Thursday night. He will be the starter.”

HOW DOES THAT IMPACT WHAT YOU WANT TO DO AGAINST BRIDGEWATER?

“I think it makes us better on defense. I think that’s what it does for us. We’re going to play our defense. We certainly have a tremendous amount of respect for Teddy and what he’s capable of doing but we have to play good defense within our system and Jamal Merrell is an excellent football player. He’ll make our system better, which hopefully will help us play better defense on Thursday night.”

DO YOU THINK HE CAN PLAY A STARTER’S WORKLOAD?

“I do. I think he’s ready to go. He has passed all the tests and qualifications that he needed to to get cleared. Physically he looked like he could’ve played last week but he wasn’t medically ready to play. Now he’s cleared and ready to go.”

HOW MUCH ENERGY IS THERE 24 HOURS AFTER A 4 ½ HOUR GAME?

“They’re young people. They bounce back pretty quickly. A couple guys are sore and that type of thing. The energy was excellent out here tonight. We went a little bit longer than we would on a normal Sunday. A little less than we would on a normal Tuesday. Somewhere in between. We got everything installed that we would normally get installed on a Tuesday.”

DOES IT MATTER WHO STARTS AT RUNNING BACK? THEY’RE LISTED AS CO-STARTERS.

“I don’t think it does. Savon (Huggins) will start the game and Justin (Goodwin) will go in the second drive just like he did last week. Both those guys will play through the game.”

IS CHRIS MULLER STILL YOUR GUY AT RIGHT GUARD?

“Muller will start the game. Antwan (Lowery) came out of it with a little bit of an ankle injury so he couldn’t go tonight. On a short week, that’s tough. You don’t have the normal time to recover. We’ll see. I’m optimistic that he’ll go on Thursday night but we’ll see what it looks like tomorrow.”

WHAT MADE YOU PUT ANTWAN IN THE GAME SATURDAY? WHAT DID YOU SEE ON FILM FROM THEM?

“I thought Chris was doing a good job but at that point in the game we felt like Antwan could give us a little something different. When Antwan got in there I thought he took advantage of his opportunity. It was never a move that was meant to be permanent for the season. Now that Chris can sit back and watch the tape we’ll get him back in there and I think he’ll do a good job going forward.”

HOW MUCH OF A LUXURY IS IT TO HAVE A GUY LIKE ANTWAN ON THE BENCH?

“I think if your team is going to play at a high level, your fourth and fifth year players have to contribute and play at a high level. Antwan is one of those guys for us and somebody who has done it and when healthy can really be a valuable part of this football team.”

DOES FACING THE POTENTIAL NO. 1 OVERALL PICK IN THE DRAFT IN TEDDY BRIDGWATER RAISE THE LEVEL EVEN MORE THAN IT DID AGAINST DEREK CARR AND GARRETT GILBERT?

“I don’t think there is any doubt that he will be the No. 1 pick in the draft. Teddy is a tremendous football player. I had a lot of respect for him before what he did last year and even more afterward. Just by the way he performed with the injury he had at the time. When you play a quarterback like that what you have to go into the game understanding is he is going to make some plays. You try to minimize that with what you do on defense but you’re not going to stop him completely. That’s just not how it works.”

DO YOU ANTICIPATE HIM THROWING 70 TIMES LIKE THE OTHER TWO QBS DID?

“I don’t. But I don’t every try to guess. They’re statistics would say he is not going to. The way they play offense is different from those two teams. They want to run the football like we do. They want to challenge you down the field. Teddy Bridgewater will throw the ball down the field. Teddy Bridgewater will throw the ball down the field quite a bit. He’s got some talented receivers. I’m not sure if all those receivers are available to him judging by what happened in the last game. They have some talented guys out there running around and they are going to push the ball down the field and he does it with great accuracy.”

HOW DID THE OFFENSIVE LINE DO IN PASS PROTECTION AGAINST SMU AND WHAT DO THEY NEED TO DO AGAINST LOUISVILLE, WHICH HAS TWO OF THE TOP SACKS GUYS IN THIS LEAGUE?

“The issues that Louisville presents is that they’re tough to run the ball against. Because of that they’ve been able to get people off schedule. Philosophically, they’re not very different than what we’re trying to do even though they don’t necessarily do it the same way. I thought in the last game at times we performed really well. Over the course of the full game, I believe it was 90 snaps on offense, we had some plays later in the game that hurt us a little bit. More so in the run game than in pass protection. We gave up some sacks but those weren’t necessarily one-on-ones. One was on the back. One was hot. Overall I think we did a pretty good job pass protecting. But it’s going to start with the ability to run the football on both sides. I think if they’re first, we’re second or third. The team that runs the ball the best will probably have the best night in pass protection.”

YOU’RE 16.5 POINT UNDERDOGS. THOUGHTS ON THAT?

“I don’t concern myself with that. I don’t usually look at it to see what it is in other weeks so I don’t have a frame of reference to comment on it.”

DID YOU GET AN EXPLANATION ON THE TWO-POINT CONVERSION?

“I did not. Terry McAulay who is the director of officials for our league also works in the NFL. Today he is working his job in the NFL and I generally catch up with him on Mondays and I’m curious because I thought it was something that could be reviewable just because I thought it was an egregious error but we’ll see what the official word is. I don’t know that I’m right.”

DID YOU SEE THE PLAY WHERE JEREMY DEERING KICKED THE BALL OUT OF BOUNDS? WHAT HAPPENED?

“We did look at it. There is a whistle on that play that stops the play. We have to find out why the whistle might have been blown when it was. Those are things I have to talk to Terry about. The officials in our league do an excellent job and it’s a game played at very high speeds. They have a challenging job on their hands just like we do as coaches.”

DO YOU WORRY ABOUT THIS BIG STAGE FOR TRUE FRESHMEN IN KEY ROLES? DO YOU THINK THEY’RE PAST THAT AT THIS POINT?

“I think they are. I think once you get into a college game, these guys have all been the focal points of their team in high school. I don’t think that part of it is any different for them. Once they’ve done it in a game, for me that’s enough. I tend to not try to predict it before I see it in the games but once I see them perform I don’t know there is any more sense of urgency because there might be more people in the stands necessarily.”

IS THIS A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THREAT FROM BRIDGEWATER THAN YOU’VE SEEN BEFORE?

“I don’t know about completely different because SMU pushed the ball down the field a little bit. The way they’ll do is there will be some drop-back, some play-actions. I think it’s critical when you play against a quarterback like this that you do your job on defense. It’s an oversimplification but it’s really not any more complicated than that. They’ve got talented players. We’ve got some talented players. If we do a good job stopping the run and keeping them off schedule, we’ll do better in pass defense. If they’re able to run the ball then everything gets harder.”

DO YOU ANTICIPATE USING TEJAY JOHNSON IN A SIMILAR HYBRID ROLE?

“I do like it but I like it a little bit more against some of the personnel groups that we’re playing against. Now with Jamal available to us, I think had Jamal been available to us last week I don’t know if we would’ve used it as much. We probably would’ve still used it but in a limited role. I think now that Jamal is back, Jamal can do some of those things and Tejay can go back there and give us some depth there as well.”

With only four days to prepare for a massive, ESPN-televised American Athletic Conference showdown at consensus No. 8 Louisville, Rutgers is nursing a few injuries in key spots. Junior running back Savon Huggins is being listed as probable with ankle and shoulder ailments, while sophomore wide receiver Leonte Carroo is also probable with an upper body injury.

Piscataway native Nadir Barnwell — known around Middlesex County as an explosive offensive player — scored the first touchdown of his career as a Rutgers’ cornerback in Saturday’s win. He is seen here grabbing the jersey of a SMU receiver. (USA Today Sports)

Nadir Barnwell spent plenty of time in the end zone at Piscataway High School, mostly celebrating with teammates who were on the receiving end of his school-record 34 touchdown passes but occasionally using his legs to get a quarterback scramble touchdown.

Barnwell returned to familiar territory Saturday for the first time as a collegian, recovering a fumble in the end zone for a first-quarter touchdown that gave Rutgers a 14-point-lead en route to its 55-52 triple-overtime victory against SMU.

“When the play started the quarterback was trying to check, check and the center snapped it when he wasn’t ready,” said Barnwell, a true freshman who played almost the entire game at cornerback. “As the quarterback tried to scoop it and get it out of his hands, Darius (Hamilton) tackled him and stripped it out.”

Hamilton was credited with a forced fumble for jarring the ball from quarterback Garrett Gilbert, who apparently was hoping to throw the ball away rather than kick it out of the end zone for a safety.

Barnwell has quickly climbed up the depth chart at the most shallow position on Rutgers’ depth chart, making his first career start Sept. 21 against Arkansas. He had 10 tackles, including one for loss, and a pass break-up in his first four games but none of that compared to scoring.

“It’s been a minute since I’ve been in the end zone,” he said, “but it felt good to score and contribute to the team.”

Here is my AP Top 25 ballot following Week 6 action, and you’ll notice Rutgers is my last team in. Say what you will about squandering two 21-point leads and nearly lossing to a middling SMU team, the Scarlet Knights didn’t and clearly have shown they can emerge triumphant in a variety of different ways with this team. And with a true litmus test coming Thursday night when they travel to No. 8 Louisville, they will get a chance to prove whether they’re a Top 25 power this week. … No changes in my top 10 from last week, although I strongly considered moving Stanford ahead of Ohio State. Out this week are Maryland and Ole Miss; unblemished Missouri enters along with Rutgers after a 23-point road win over Vanderbilt. … Also considered: Virginia Tech, Nebraska, UCF, Michigan St.

That sentiment was heard multiple times Saturday’ in Rutgers’ postgame locker room after beating SMU 55-52 in triple overtime. But another thought that was repeated over and over is that there is a lot to correct in a short amount of time, especially with Louisville looming on Thursday.

Julie Hermann was hired last May as Rutgers athletics director after her predecessor, Tim Pernetti, was forced to resign as part of the fallout from the physical and verbal abuse scandal involving former men’s basketball coach Mike Rice. Not long after her hiring, Hermann landed in the midst of her own coaching abuse firestorm as several members of the Tennessee women’s volleyball team accused her of using abusive language when she coached them in the 1990s.

Now, nearly four months after she began her tenure as Rutgers AD, Hermann is at the center of another controversy related to her time as executive senior AD at the University of Louisville.

Hermann served as chief administrator for the Cardinals lacrosse program and was Young’s supervisor. The story calls into question whether Hermann did enough to stop Young’s alleged behavior, as Louisville players and their parents reportedly said “they complained to Hermann about Young as early as 2012 but saw no change, even though Hermann led them to believe Young would be disciplined or fired.”

The Gannett Louisville newspaper obtained an email reported to be from Hermann written on April 25, 2013 — 20 days before she was appointed AD by Rutgers — in which she apparently replied to a parent’s complaints about Young by acknowledging prior issues with the coach.

“Please be assured that this is not new information to us and therefore has been part of the ongoing dialogue along with a mass of other information we have acquired and are working on,” Hermann wrote, according to the report. “(The team has) two competitions this weekend and then we will make a determination on how the program goes forward.”

If there is just one play of the 184 run from scrimmage by the two teams Saturday in Rutgers’ 55-52 triple-overtime win against SMU that is going to make national headlines, it is SMU’s two-point conversion to tie the score at 35-35 with 79 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter.

Quarterback Garrett Gilbert spun out of the pocket, slipped away from tackles by Marcus Thompson and Darius Hamilton, outran Ike Holmes to the visitor’s sideline and threw the ball on the run about 40 yards across the field to the back of the end zone to a wide open Jeremy Johnson, who toe-tapped his feet for the completion.

Here is how the players and coaches saw it:

SMU COACH JUNE JONES: “That play in particular really showed everything (about Gilbert). There is not many guys who could’ve avoided the sack, ran out and thrown it all the way across the field to make that play.”

GILBERT: “It was a play we’d had some success with earlier in the game. Jeremy had already caught a touchdown or two on that play. Credit Rutgers for covering it well. As I started to roll out I saw Jeremy in the corner and just kept in the back of my mind that if I couldn’t find anyone then in a last-ditch effort I was going to give it a shot.”

JOHNSON: “Before the play started, Garrett told me to yell at him when I was wide open, so I was yelling at him from the corner of the end zone. I definitely thought he wasn’t going to throw it back to me, but once he did, I had to do everything to catch the ball.”

RUTGERS CORNERBACK NADIR BARNWELL: “We were in a zone coverage. My man went across the field and they had a man coming back and I saw the quarterback looking for him. I ran with him and then I saw the quarterback scrambling. With the pursuit of our d-line and our linebackers I figured he was going to be tackled soon. I started jogging over. Then when I saw him throw it I was like, ‘I know he didn’t just throw this ball all the way across the field.’ I turned around and No. 15 is just sitting there. Before I could even run to him he just tip-toed his way in.’”

RUTGERS SAFETY LORENZO WATERS: “I saw my man scramble to the back of the end zone by the goal post so I’m thinking they’re going to my man. Next thing I know I hear the crowd. It’s just a scramble drill. All you’ve got to do is stay on your man. You can’t let your man go and run after the quarterback because that frees up receivers. That’s exactly what happened.”

RUTGERS COACH KYLE FLOOD: “you feel like you’ve got him a couple times. You don’t have him until he’s down. I’m not sure who the corner at the top of the field was and I’m not sure why had had drifted away from where he was. That quarterback has an arm that can make every throw on the field. To think there is a throw he can’t get to is a very field poor decision.”

T.J. Jurkiewicz Our in-house gambling expert made his run at glory this past summer Over the summer, our contributor T.J. Jurkiewicz made a significant run in the Tag Team event at the famed World Series of Poker. Out of 976 entries, T.J. and his partner finished in 4th place, splitting winning of $52,390. Did you […]

Art Pittman-USA TODAY Sports With Rutgers on a bye, here are who we are paying attention to within the conference. With Rutgers on a bye, our staff let you know which Big Ten teams we will be watching this weekend. Adam Ross: I’ll be keeping my eye on the Maryland-Temple game. Maryland is our next […]